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Going to the movies is fun; you can make a day of it, have lunch or dinner and spend a good percentage of a week’s salary. Getting DVD’s (or videos) from the shop can also add $20 a week to the budget. But there are other ways to get your entertainment.

You already pay for your Internet connection and these days, the deals range into the 10’s of Gigabytes per month for the equivalent of 2 – 3 weeks of DVD’s – unless you have a compulsive downloader in the family, it is unlikely oyou will be using all that capacity each month.

One technology in use involves what are called Torrent files. This is a Peer-to-Peer technology, where multiple Internet users provide access to particular files from their machine and the Torrent software reaches out and downloads the files from up to fifty or more computers, while simultaneously sending out parts of the files to others.

Torrent programs are available from the torrent sites, but a few of the best are uTorrent, BitTorrent and Azureus.

Torrents can allow you to download at a good percentage of your Broadband speed and the Torrent sites offer a mind boggling array of files, including games, programs, music and movies.

Leaving aside the questions of legality the facts are many millions of people around the world are visiting these sites and downloading their choice of software and media files.

So how do you use them?

There are two parts to the process. First you find the files you want, then you use a downloader program to connect out to the other computers (Peers) that have all the bits of the files you want.

There are Torrent sites that host all the file links and sites that will search a number of Torrent sites looking for what you want - torrentz.com is one of the latter. To use it, you go to the site, search for what you want and click on the link. This will bring up a list of Torrent sites that have the file and you choose one and download the torrent file.

There is an implicit (and sometimes explicit) contract with the Torrent sites and users; you agree to ‘host’ the files you download, at least until you’ve uploaded as much as you downloaded, and preferably more. If everyone just downloads and logs off the system fails and nobody gets the stuff they want. So when you download, leave the torrent file open so others can share the fun.